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Here’s some food for thought. I just watched this video on A Photo Editor called, “F- You, Pay Me.” If you don’t have time to watch the entire video, although you should if you freelance, it basically says that all creatives who charge for their work should always put everything in a contract so there are never any discrepancies. You want everything on the table upfront. It’s to protect you AND the client.

In the photo industry, photographers already practice this, or they hire producers to do it for them when dealing with agencies and clients. But what about the rest of the crew? Why is it common for the rest of the crew to work on handshakes even though we’re all freelance?

It’s a tough bridge to cross and become contractual because it isn’t common for crew members to work under contracts upfront. If you’re not familiar how it typically works, the crew get’s a phone call from the producer or photographer asking them if they’re available on said dates and willing to work for X amount. You say yes, and now you’re all in. Things can change, but nothing is in writing and won’t be until you send your invoice at the end of the job. The only time numbers are put in writing with discussing your fee is when the photographer or producer asks the stylist to send a rough estimate of what things might cost when they’re in the bidding process to get hired for the job with the agency. In this case, it is based on estimated costs, nothing is finite, therefore it is far from a written contract. As a stylist, the riskiest situation is when you’re hired by out-of-towners you’ve never worked with or met before, and you’re asked to put THOUSANDS of dollars on your credit card for requested materials to get the job done. All you have is a verbal handshake with the hopes that these expenses will be covered. Luckily, I’ve never had any issues, but luck runs out and I never want to be in the position where I’m kicking myself in hind sight.

So you ask, why don’t you put everything in writing from the get go? Concerns that I’d have if I started to send contracts before starting a job is a majority of producers and photographers want a crew that can role with the punches and not nickel and dime you for every mile you drove, for example. I’d be afraid that those hiring me would see it as being too rigid and start thinking of me as someone who is less about the creative goal and more about the money. When I really think about it, that’s silly. In fact, the photo industry may be the only creative industry where everything isn’t spelled out from the beginning from everyone involved. In film and television, when filling out paperwork, I often start to feel like I’m closing on a house rather than signing a couple of papers because EVERYTHING is accounted for. In the photo industry, things are only brought up through verbal communication with the crew, where it’s easy for bits and pieces to be lost or a miscommunication to occur. Ironing out money details before the job is easy, ironing out money details after the job is uncomfortable. No one likes to be mislead or feel like they’re losing money. It’s easier to work for less if you know from the start because it’s up to you whether or not to take the job. It’s a lot touchier negotiating fees after the job is performed because the expectations of the job had changed or their was a miscommunication from the beginning about your fee. Losing the money you thought you earned becomes much harder to swallow. The thing is, contracts couldn’t hurt.

I’d love to hear feedback from industry professionals who hire crew members on what they’d think if they were presented with a contract prior to a shoot from wardrobe and/or prop stylists.

I’ve been quite happy with Qufoto as a website host. It looks good to almost great, it’s crazy cheap (no initial fee and $19 a month), BUT it doesn’t show video and looks terrible on a iPad. Since I’m doing more motion than still these days and more and more creatives are using iPads, I’m on a big hunt for a new website host. I’ve been considering A Photo Folio, does anyone have any other suggestions? A Photo Folio seems to have everything I need, but would like to see more options. Thank you for your help!

I’m not sure where my husband heard this quote, but he sure loves to repeat it and I’d have to admit, I kind of agree. Food definitely has more of a media presence seeing how chefs are all over prime time network television and Justin Bieber can only be seen performing Fridays on the Today show. Maybe it’s because we’re all sick of our pop music options and food never stops being delicious. Accomplished chefs have become celebrities and restaurants have become the new hot ticket. With all that being said, I had to restrain from screaming like a 12-year-old girl when work allowed me to step foot into Alinea’s kitchen last week. HOLY ****! It bursted my bubble. Voted the best restaurant in the Americas and #7 in the world, I now only wonder, what does 4, 5, and 6’s kitchen look like on a Saturday night? I guess when you’re cooking magic, quite literally, you need to operate like a Swiss machine. The 25 chefs (guestimate) who working in the 500 square foot kitchen (another guestimate) operated like swift feathers. I swear, you could whisper across the room and be heard, and on a Saturday night? This was an operation that could only be mandated by a true visionary (Chef Grant), and I felt truly honored to see it in action. Now I need to save my pennies to eat there and when I say pennies, I mean a mortgage payment for me and my better half to enjoy this epic concert. Worth it? I don’t have any doubts.

Here’s a couple of photos I asked the hair and make up artist to take of me in the entrance hall to the restaurant. It’s a strange combination of Alice in Wonderland and 2001 Space Odyssey, with a hint of Back to the Future Part 2.

After plucking at people’s shirts and sniffing the air of every fine mall in the area, I found I needed a little balance. Here’s an amazing program and great volunteer opportunity, especially for those who freelance and can’t commit to anything long term because of their unpredictable schedules. NFTE- Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship provides programs that inspire young people from low-income communities to recognize business opportunities and plan for their financial futures. In a NFTE program students learn business concepts, practice skills including negotiation and pricing, and work on completion of business plans for their own individual businesses. Pretty awesome, right? That’s just a taste of the awesomeness that goes on.

A huge part of the success of the program is in bringing in outside speakers to come and speak the students directly. They’re looking for more creatives to come into their classrooms because it’s a frequently requested career path. I just did my first volunteer session last week where I spoke to two different classes about what it means to freelance in a creative field and what to expect. It was a really rewarding experience and I can’t wait to visit a different school. You might think, “Dang, I don’t live in Chicago, but I would love to volunteer!” You still can my friends. NFTE is in 22 states and 9 countries. If you click here or HERE, you can hear about the program and all the different opportunities they offer.

Now that we’ve formally dropped the Music from MTV and have officially said good night to music videos on television, mega mall store J. Crew has hit up the opportunity to take the old art form and turn it into marketing. This video for the band, The Rassle is pretty straight forward, but made me excited to think there’s a whole world of ideas that could jump from this.

I was working on a project set in the early 90’s where I was FORCED (and loved) watching angsty romantic comedies like Singles and Reality Bites for inspiration. In my research, I also found a local “vintage” store called Kokorokoko that sells things you probably still have buried somewhere deep in your closet. Much like people calling bowling a sport, I don’t think I can back the idea that 90’s clothing as being “vintage,” OR maybe I’m in denial because I don’t want to feel old. I guess you can decide.

It was very surprising to see a retailer, an independent retailer no less, at #2 on Inc. Magazine’s top 500 list. Modcloth is a website that specializes in indie, retro, and vintage apparel, accessories, shoes, and decor from independent designers and artists at an affordable price point. Much like Obama, they believe in working at a grassroots level in interacting with their client through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and their Modlife Blog. They also ask you to vote on potential inventory with the Be the Buyer program so you can have the opportunity to have your voice heard to keep the company fresh, relevant, and growing by leaps and bounds. This allows them to continually accommodate their shoppers by pioneering passion for modern trends. Pretty smart if you ask me and apparently everyone else agrees. Their 3 year growth is 17,191% and currently have 15.6 million in revenue.

If you’re interested in starting your own retail endeavor, I suggest you read this interview with the founder of Modcloth, Susan Gregg Kogar. Click on her picture to bring you to the interview.

Columbia College in Chicago just had a great event where they featured 3 photographers from PDN 30 under 30, an art buyer and an accomplished photographer to talk about how they got into the industry and what seemed to be working for them. The art buyer was there to be the voice of the hiring side and to share the things she’s looking for in a photographer. First you’re probably wondering, why were you there as a stylist? Simply put, I like to hear from people and I love photography. I go to everything because I’ve never walked out of a lecture or meeting where I thought something was a complete waste of time. I enjoy hearing everyone’s insight, whether I agree with it or not, it always important to get another perspective.

At this point, I’ve been to enough of these talks to know that there are going to be a number of people in the audience that are looking for THE answer to becoming successful in the photo industry. Everyone wants to know the magic formula, the secret list of 5 steps that work, or the 5 people that they NEED to talk to if they want to be successful. The three 30 Under 30 nominees all had very different stories on how they’ve got to where they are today, none of which may work for the next person in line. While filling the room with possibly false hopes, the accomplished photographer chimed in and said with a chuckle, “All you need is the 3 P’s; point of view, perseverance, and personal relationships.” As the talk progressed, the panelists agreed that the 4th P could be passion.

Could this be THE answer? The 4 P’s? Honestly, hardly. Of course you need all of these things but that still might not open up the golden ticket. I guess that’s why we’re all still here. If we weren’t interested in the journey to the destination, we’d all just play the lottery. The fun is trying to figure this all out. The 4 P’s are a great place to start, but I’m sure there’s an N, a T, and a L too that are giving the person next to you the edge. That’s why you need to work on your own S, R, and K on top of the P’s to make yourself indispensable. Gosh, now I feel like eating alphabet soup and watching Sesame Street.

Hollywood East is a term originally used for the recent growth of the film industry in New England, particularly Massachusetts and Connecticut, but is most often used as an alternate name for Plymouth Rock Studios, a movie studio opening in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 2010. The name is a reference to Hollywood, California, the center of the American Film History, located on the west coast of the United States. This term was popularized in the press in 2007 as film and television productions migrated to the east coast to take advantage of tax incentives put in place by several state governments. Old warehouses and office buildings have been used for filming due to a lack of infrastructure in the region, leading to several groups of developers coming forward with plans to build full service studios. Two notable developments in Massachusetts, Plymouth Rock Studios, based in Plymouth, and SouthField Studios, based in Weymouth were profiled in the Boston Globe in April 2008. More recently Plymouth Rock Studios has come into the spotlight after passing their Plymouth Town Meeting vote in October 2008 and announcing a partnership with MIT Media Lab in November that was featured in the New York Times. The partnership is described as “a fusion between technology and the arts” that the studio and MIT believe will come to define Hollywood East as a movement.

This is a re-post from the NY Times Fashion Blog’s news feed. I’d be lying if I said this made me sad. Maybe if they put something on sale every once in a while and thought of better campaigns than underage girls spreading their legs in leopard print, thong leotards. For a company that is doing the right thing by manufacturing in the USA, their focus and intent seems to be a little off. It sounds like people are finally taking notice and buying their neon leggings elsewhere.

Photo: Maura Murnanae

NY Times Post:

What would the world be like without American Apparel? What would your life be like without American Apparel? Naked? And cold, but with warmer ass cheeks? These questions, like it or not, become more real with each passing day as the clothing company’s financial woes reach terrifyingly dismal places. The company was just subpoenaed by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York for switching accounting firms, which sent the stock price tumbling 13 percent — leaving the shares dropping 66 percent as a whole over the last twelve months. The company has also failed to file its second-quarter earnings, while the SEC continues to threaten to de-list the company from the stock exchange. Meanwhile, CEO Dov Charney says that American Apparel might not meet obligations to creditors, which could lead to them losing access to their last lifeline of credit. All of these things, the company says, “raise substantial doubt that the company will be able to continue” under the threat of going bankrupt.

So how much do you love your leggings and your reasonably-but-kind-of-overpriced bat-wing hoodies? Do you love them? Do you really love them? Enter WWD:

“Based on this, and trends occurring in the company’s business after the second quarter and projected for the remainder of 2010, the company may not have sufficient liquidity necessary to sustain operations for the next twelve months,” American Apparel said.

The company estimates it has more than $91 million in debt at this point. Charney recently told Business Week:

“A lot of assumptions that I grew up with are no longer reality,” he says. “Those were things that we could rely on: that lenders will always be there, that they’ll behave ethically and they’ll always have money, that you can trust that as the sun comes up the consumer will be healthy, that we’ll always be close to full employment in developed nations. Now there are no certainties.”

American Apparel estimates second-quarter losses from operations — just operations! — to total around $5 to $7 million. Charney wears American Apparel exclusively. How many people like him are there in this world who would rather go naked than dress in past seasons’ AA? Now, if there’s a question we never wanted to know the answer to, that would be the one.